


Your Evil Neighbourhood Spider

by archerdork



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Marvel - Freeform, Spiders, despite the distinct lack of college, prompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 16:25:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5170520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archerdork/pseuds/archerdork
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: "I live next door and I heard screaming so I came over thinking someone was getting murdered and now we’re both trying to get the spider out of your apartment."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Evil Neighbourhood Spider

Steve Rogers was no stranger to loud noises emanating from his neighbours apartment. On the day Steve moved in, AC/DC had blared loud enough to rattle his windows, and then it’d just moved downhill from there. Though the music he could deal with. Not that it was fun being woken up at 4am the morning of an important exam, but he’d take it over the hammering and sawing and welding any day. Steve had banged on the door a couple of times, and whenever he happened to run into the guy in the hall he’d asked him to keep it down, but he’d never asked what he was doing in there. Frankly he was a little scared of the answer. It wasn’t until Bucky came bursting through the door one day hissing “You live next door to Tony fucking Stark?” that some things started to make a little more sense.

So yes, Steve Rogers was no stranger to loud noises emanating from his neighbours apartment, and was getting really good at ignoring them.

But he was pretty sure no one would be able to ignore the high-pitched, piercing scream, barely muffled by the wall separating their apartments. Steve dropped the coffee cup he’d been holding and was heading toward the door before it’d even hit the floor. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was doing, because it sounded a bit like his neighbours was being murdered and what the hell was he supposed to do against a killer? Sure, years of physical therapy and relentless workouts had turned the scrawny little kid into an at least semi fit man, but muscles didn’t do much against bullets and knives, did they?  
  
Steve burst through the door to his neighbour’s apartment and froze in his tracks. Whatever he’d been expecting it wasn’t this. Instead of a killer maniac, he came face to face with a robot. Or at least a vaguely robot looking metal arm on wheels. With a plastic container in it’s claw. It made a whirring sound, bobbing its… well, head, at Steve and then wheeled past him. Steve blinked.  
  
“Uh…” He shook his head, trying to clear it. “Hello?”  
  
There was a sort of pained squeal coming from the general direction the robot arm thing where heading. Steve followed into the living room, already hearing Bucky’s “fuck sake Steve you’re gonna get yourself killed one day!”-speech in his head. This apartment was nearly identical in layout to his, but the decor was completely different. Where Steve’s was… minimalistic retro (Bucky: “fucking granny home”), this was a junkyard. The whole living room was a maze of scrap metal, wooden crates, computer screens, machines in various stages of completion and household appliances in various stages of deconstruction. And in the middle of it, on a table, stood Tony Stark, with a hammer in one hand and a blowtorch in the other.  
  
“Stark?” Steve said, slowly walking closer. “You all right?” He had to admit he didn’t keep up that much with gossip magazines, but he’d gathered the while the guy was a genius, he could also be a tiny bit unhinged at times.  
  
“Shh! Don’t scare it away!” Tony hissed, waving the hammer in Steve’s direction.  
  
Exhibit A.  
  
“Scare what away?” Steve said, sidestepping what looked like a hybrid of a coffee machine and a television on wheels.  
  
“Dummy, get over here and catch the bloody thing already!”  
  
Steve barely had time to feel insulted before the robot arm wheeled past him, plastic container still in its claw.  
  
“What’s going on?” he tried again, and this time Tony looked at him.  
  
“Spider,” he said, and pointed at the floor a couple of feet from where Steve stood.  
  
He would for years to come insist that he had not screamed.  
  
Steve wasn’t afraid of spiders. He wasn’t. It was just that this wasn’t a spider. It was a monster. It was a huge, hairy beast with long, thick legs and a sickly green blackish colour crawling toward him on the floor. Steve could swear he saw blank eyes stare up at him, before he flung himself onto the table as well.  
  
“Let me guess, not a fan of spiders either?” Tony asked, shuffling to the side to give Steve room.  
  
“What gave it away?” Steve muttered, keeping his eyes on the spider. It was still staring at him.  
  
Tony sighed.  
  
“So much for my knight in shining armour.“  
  
Steve rolled his eyes.  
  
The robot arm (Dummy?) rolled past and more or less threw the plastic container toward the spider, missing by at least a feet. It scurried off, disappearing behind a demolished microwave. Tony screamed and threw the hammer after it. It went high and hit the coffee-TV-machine instead, and damn it if he was going crazy, but Steve could have sworn the spider poked its head out from under the microwave, taunting them.  
  
“Dummy you insufferable coat hanger!” Tony yelled, and the robot bowed his head.  
  
“Look what you did! Now we’ll never find it!” He raised his hands to his head, and Steve ducked the blowtorch. “Oh my god, I have to move, don’t I? But what if it crawls into something and I bring it with me? Jesus fuck, what if it lay eggs? Rogers, how long until spider eggs hatch? We’ll be overrun by morning. I’ll die here. Dummy, if I die here I’ll donate you to city college!”  
  
Steve very carefully took the blowtorch from Tony, with a bit of a struggle, and sat it down on the table.  
  
“Stark,” he put a hand on each of Tony’s shoulders, “please calm down.”  
  
Tony blinked up at him.  
  
“I hate spiders.”  
  
Steve let go, and gave his shoulder a comforting pat.  
  
“Me too.”  
  
Dummy came rolling up to them, dropping the plastic container on the table and bowing its head.  
  
“Nope. We’re not talking to you, you did a bad. Go put yourself in a corner right now!”  
  
Tony tried to wave him away, and the robot rolled toward Steve instead, reaching its head up toward him.  
  
“Hi,” Steve said, and Dummy waved franticly until Steve reached forward and patted the head. It made content whirring sound.  
  
“Don’t encourage him!” Tony whined, batting Steve’s hands away. “Dummy, get back to spider catching duty you-”  
  
He screamed again, suddenly clinging to Steve. Steve looked down just in time to see the spider scurry out from under the microwave and climb into the broken frame of a computer screen closer to their table. The sight of it actually made his stomach turn. Oh god, if Bucky and Natasha ever found out about this, he’d never hear the end of it. He untangled himself from Tony’s arms and moved closer to the edge of the table, mentally steeled himself. Just as he was about to put a foot on the floor, the spider came crawling out again, aiming straight toward him. Steve threw himself backward onto the table again, and the spider climbed into a discarded cardboard box instead.  
  
“I’ll die here. Clever little monster will be the death of me,” Tony mumbled behind him and Steve sighed.  
  
“We could just call an exterminator,” he suggested. Tony laughed bitterly.  
  
“I’d like to think I have a little more dignity than that.”  
  
Steve chuckled.  
  
“I think that ship sailed the moment you decided to hide on a table.”  
  
Tony glared at him and Steve shrugged.  
  
“If we don’t move it might get bored and leave.”  
  
They stood in silence for a while, watching the spider peak its head out and look at them before retreating into the cardboard box again. Then Tony pulled his phone from his pocket and wiggled it.  
  
“So. How do you fancy some take-out?”  
  
Steve raised an eyebrow.  
  
“What happened to your dignity?”  
  
Tony shrugged.  
  
“Wouldn’t be the first time Dummy answered the door and paid for my food. They stopped freaking out and calling the police months ago.”  
  
Steve stared at him for a moment, then shook his head and gave up.  
  
“Sure.”

  


**Author's Note:**

> ahrent is the best of betas
> 
> my tumblr: archerdork.tumblr.com


End file.
